Nancy Drew is a fictional character in a juvenile fiction mystery series created by publisher
Edward Stratemeyer. The girl who likes solving mysteries first appeared in 1930 and still enjoys
great popularity; the books have been ghostwritten by a number of authors and are published
under the collective pseudonym Carolyn Keene. So far about 500 books about Nancy Drew have
been released. It is one of the longest running book series in history. Nancy Drew has proved
continuously popular worldwide: at least 100 million copies of the books have been sold, and the
books have been translated into over 45 languages. Six feature films, and three television series
about Nancy Drew have been produced to date.
Nancy Drew has appeared in computer games and in a variety of merchandise sold over the
world.
A cultural icon, Nancy Drew has been cited as
a formative influence by a number of women,
from Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day
O'Connor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
and former First Lady Laura Bush. Feminist
literary critics have analyzed the character's
enduring appeal, arguing variously that Nancy
Drew is a mythic hero, an expression of wish
fulfillment, or an embodiment of contradictory
ideas about femininity.
Less prominent women also credit the
character of Nancy Drew with helping them to
become stronger women; when the first Nancy
Drew conference was held, at the University
of Iowa, in 1993, conference organizers
received a flood of calls from women who "all
had stories to tell about how instrumental
Nancy had been in their lives, and about how
she had inspired, comforted, entertained them
through their childhoods, and, for a surprising
number of women, well into adulthood."
In the books Nancy Drew is a 16-year-old high
school student, she lives in the fictional town
of River Heights with her father, attorney
Carson Drew, and their housekeeper, Hannah
Gruen. She spends her time solving mysteries. Nancy is often assisted in solving mysteries by
her two closest friends, Bess Marvin and George Fayne, and also occasionally by her boyfriend,
Ned Nickerson, who is a college student. Nancy is wealthy, attractive, and amazingly talented:
The cultural impact of Nancy Drew has been enormous. Nancy Drew's popularity continues
unabated: in 2012 seven new books about Nancy Drew were published and sold 200,000 copies.
Sales of the volumes of the Nancy Drew series alone has surpassed sales of Agatha Christie titles.
Approximately 5 new Drew titles are released a year. Entertainment Weekly ranked her
seventeenth on its list of "The Top 20 Heroes", ahead of Batman, explaining that Drew is the
"first female hero most little girls meet ...Nancy lives in an endless summer of never-ending
adventures and unlimited potential."
The Hardy Boys: Frank and Joe Hardy are fictional amateur detectives who appear in various
mystery series for children and teens.
The characters were created by Edward Stratemeyer, the founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate
and the man who also invented Nancy Drew. The books about the Hardy boys have been written
by many different ghostwriters over the years. The books are published under the collective
pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon.
The books still sell more than a million copies a year. Several additional volumes are published
annually, and the boys' adventures have been translated into more than 30 languages. The Hardy
Boys have been featured in computer games and five television series and used to promote
merchandise such as jeans.
Critics have offered many explanations for the characters' longevity, suggesting variously that
the Hardy Boys embody American ideals of masculinity, and the possibility of the triumph of
good over evil. The Hardys are considered “the ideal American guys who are good looking,
clever, strong and play every school sport”.
The Hardy Boys are fictional teenage brothers
and amateur detectives. They live in the city of
Bayport with their father, detective Fenton
Hardy, and their mother. Frank, the elder
brother, is 17, and his younger brother Joe is
16. The brothers attend high school, but school
is rarely mentioned in the books. The Boys'
cases often are linked to the confidential cases
their detective father is working on. He
sometimes asks them for help. The Hardy
Boys have been called "a cultural phenomenon
of America". Their adventures have been
continuously in print since 1927. The series
was an instant success: as of 2012 the books
were selling over a million copies a year The
critics have always tried to explain the reasons
for the characters' popularity.
One explanation for this continuing popularity
is that the Hardy Boys stories allow readers to
experience an escape from the mundane. At
the same time, Frank and Joe live ordinary
lives when not solving mysteries, allowing
readers to identify with characters who seem realistic and whose parents are supportive and
loving. Some critics have also been worried by the way the Hardys are depicted: they seldom go
out with their girlfriends and are very honest and too smart. This led to the Boys being parodied
innumerable times, especially on the popular TV shows like South Park and Family Guy. A very
popular adult oriented animated comedy Ventura Bros is a spoof of the Hardys.
In the end, many commentators find that the Hardy Boys are largely successful because their
adventures represent "a victory over anxiety". The Hardy Boys series teaches readers that
"although the world can be an out-of-control place, good can triumph over evil, that the worst
problems can be solved if we each do our share and our best to help others."
Edward Stratemeyer (1862 – 1930) was an American publisher and writer of children's fiction.
He is the man behind 2 most successful book series in history: Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.
He was one of the most successful publishers, selling in excess of 500 million copies.
He started his career as a reporter. In 1893 Stratemeyer was hired to write for the Good News
Magazine. He pioneered the book-packaging technique of producing a consistent, long-running,
series of books using a team of freelance writers. All of the books in the series used the same
characters in similar situations. All of the free lance writers were published under a pen name
owned by his company.
Through his Stratemeyer Syndicate, founded in 1906, Stratemeyer employed a massive number
of editors, stenographers, co-authors, and secretaries. With their help, he greatly contributed to a
new genre of juvenile fiction and became one of America’s richest men.
Stratemeyer died at 67. His enormous fortune, after much litigation, was split among his 7
nephews and nieces.
His two most successful projects: the book sereis about amateur teen detectives Nancy Drew
and Hardy brothers who have been solving mysteries for nearly 80 years. The characters have
stood the test of time: in the 1970s when the book sales dropped radically because of great
competition from TV, the mystery solving trio carried on well with the readers. In the 1990s the
Internet came along and virtually “killed” the book but the teen detectives survived, again.
Today every book about their adventures is released simultaneously in paperback and as e-book.